Re: Photos of your beloved Harbeth Speakers & Setup

Hi Sunshine,
Hopefully one day I can

Hi Jmohd,
After I got my Mistral LE, I spent quite some time on it with C7 and I didnt miss my other combo. Last weekend I swop to LE III + SHL5, I didnt miss the Mistral LE + C7 at all. Both setup got their own charm.

Re: Photos of your beloved Harbeth Speakers & Setup

The turntable was always on the Apollo shelf, but the subs which weigh 32Kg each moved the floor they were on more than the air! They have 1Kw class D equalised amps driving 12" paper/kevlar cones.
The suspended flooring was acting as a sort of badly tuned low percussion ensemble resonating at many frequencies and adding its colouration to anything with LF energy. Eliminating the direct coupling to the floor by mounting them on the brick / concrete wall totally transformed the quality of the bass which is now seriously good down to around 20Hz. (low E)
The turntable shelf is fastened to a concrete column and it's possible to dance on the floor with no ill effects whilst playing vinyl.

ps there's a 15" version of the sub which is substantally flat down to 17Hz but they would have been too big for reasons of matrimonial harmony.

Re: Mono or stereo sub bass.

Originally Posted by keithwwk

Hi Paul, thanks for the info. May I know why you are using two subs? Are you believe in stereo sub bass?

Yes I do believe in stereo subs.

I used to record music for my job so I was in a good position to experiment with different microphone arrangements as well as different speaker arrangements for playback.
For Pop music, mono (sub 80Hz) bass will do as most of the time as the bass component of the music, bass guitar or bass fiddle and bass drum are placed centre stage and apart from keyboard supplied bass, which may be stereo, are always in-phase so a single sub works very well. With classical music its a bit more complex.

I listen to lots of orchestral and Organ music and have had the opportunity to record the same. I found through experimentation with mic techniques and through watching what other sound balancers were doing and listening to the results, that at very low frequencies bass is certainly directional, but not directly in the way that most people think.

To record the very low frequencies of a Cathedral organ's 32' long pipes (16.35 -32.7 Hz) I found that co-incident microphone techniques just didn't work. The co-incident microphone is a single point microphone which has two parts, one to face left and one to face right in very close proximity. I found that having two more widely separated microphones, each capable of responding to these low frequencies, gave a much better result in the bass.

When I took these recordings home, I discovered that there was a considerable amount of out-of-phase information in the low frequency part of the recording. When this is played back on a single sub the out of phase component disappears. NO BASS at certain pitches or notes. Now a single sub adds the Left and Right components of the bass together. When they're in phase, they add up. When they're out of phase, they tend to cancel out, producing a very lumpy bass response exaggerated by both the spatial component of the mic technique and the room response.

When such a recording is played on two speakers with good LF response (M40.1 comes to mind) or when it's played on widely spaced stereo subs..heaven! With two subs placed in two different places in the room, the room modification to the LF response can be mitigated and the out of phase component in the deep bass can be reproduced as there are only acoustic cancellation effects.

If you look at the photograph you'll see that additionally, the two subs are ASYMETRICALLY placed in the room to avoid stirring up identical resonances, the opposite of the M30s which for stereo image need to be symetrically placed. A large number of classical recordings are made with spaced omnidirectional microphones, and these recordings have very good bass with out of phase components, and yes, stereo subs are great on rock'n'roll too.

Re: Photos of your beloved Harbeth Speakers & Setup

Hi Jmohd,
Although the speakers will eventually be used in HT, I have not watched a single movie since getting the Harbeth 3 weeks ago. I have only been listening to music when I have the opportunity to do so.

It has not crossed my mind of getting the new Plinius SA-103 as I would think the house sound of Plinius amps (SA-100, 102 and 103) would be more or less similar. Maybe slight refinement and finesse when going up the recent interations but I wouldn't expect major sound improvements. If I ever wanted a different kind of sound I would definitely look at the LFD Zero MkIII judging from all the rave reviews and comments are going. The Plinius has a warm syrupy sound and may likely sound quite different from the transparent, lean and detailed sound of the LFD from what I read.

Re: Mono or stereo sub bass.

Originally Posted by Paul G Smith

...When I took these recordings home, I discovered that there was a considerable amount of out-of-phase information in the low frequency part of the recording. When this is played back on a single sub the out of phase component disappears. NO BASS at certain pitches or notes.

Now a single sub adds the Left and Right components of the bass together. When they're in phase, they add up. When they're out of phase, they tend to cancel out, producing a very lumpy bass response exaggerated by both the spatial component of the mic technique and the room response.

When such a recording is played on two speakers with good LF response (M40.1 comes to mind) or when it's played on widely spaced stereo subs..heaven!

..

Hi Paul,
Many thanks to sharing me on this. The points your mentioned had proven that I was not crazy when I having two SVS subs in stereo configuration before owning SHL5. I do listen lot of classical musics. I had expereinced the same result as you mentioned when using a single sub. The bass just did not sound right to me. I do believe stereo sub can reproduce acoustically sum of in/out phase bass give the spacial bass property as what I heard in live acoustic performance. A single sub will nvr do. A pair of fuller range speaker with stereo bass woofer (L & R)play more acoustically correct or better bass than a pair of speaker + a single sub. But I had failed to setup my stereo subs and sold them to get a SHL5 instead.